Sharpe's Triumph (15 page)

And so, as he rode away from the fallen city, Dodd was inclined to ascribe Wellesley's
sudden success to beginner's luck. Dodd persuaded himself that the escalade must have
been a foolish gamble that had been unfairly rewarded with victory. It had been a rash
strategy, Dodd told himself, and though it had succeeded, it could well tempt Wellesley
into rashness again, and next time the rashness would surely be punished.

Thus Dodd attempted to discover good news within the bad.

Captain Joubert could find no good news. He rode just behind Dodd and continually
turned in his saddle for a glimpse of Simone's white dress among the fugitives that streamed
from the northern gate, but there was no sign of her, nor of Lieutenant Silliere, and each
disappointment made Pierre Joubert's loss harder to bear. He felt a tear prickle at the
corner of his eye, and then the thought that his young Simone might be raped made the tear
run down his cheek.

“What the hell are you blubbing about?” Dodd demanded.

“Something in my eye,” Joubert answered. He wished he could be more defiant, but he
felt belittled by the Englishman and unable to stand up to his bullying. In truth Pierre
Joubert had felt belittled for most of his life. His small stature and timid nature made
him a target, and he had been the obvious choice when his regiment in France had been
ordered to find one officer who could be sent as an adviser to Scindia, the Maharajah of
Gwalior. They had chosen Joubert, the one officer no one would miss, but the unpopular
posting had brought Joubert the one stroke of good fortune that had ever come his way when
the ship bringing him to India had stopped at the lie de France. He had met Simone, he had
wooed her, he had won her, and he was proud of her, intensely proud, for he knew other men
found her attractive and Joubert might have enjoyed that subtle flattery had he not known
how desperately unhappy she was. He put her unhappiness down to the vagaries of a
newly married woman's temperament and to the heat of India. He consoled himself with
the thought that in a year or two he would be summoned back to France and there Simone would
learn contentment in the company of his huge family. She would become a mother, learn to
keep house and so accept her comfortable fate. So long, that was, as she had survived
Ahmednuggur's fall. He spurred his horse alongside Dodd's.

“You were right, Colonel,” the Frenchman said grudgingly.

“There was nothing to be gained by fighting.”

He was making conversation in order to keep his mind away from his fears for
Simone.

Dodd acknowledged the compliment with a grunt.

“I'm sorry about Madame Joubert,” he forced himself to say.

“The British will send news, I'm sure,” Joubert said, clinging to a hope that Simone
would have been rescued by some gallant officer.

“But a soldier's best off without a woman,” Dodd said, then twisted in his saddle to
look at the rear guard

“Sikal's company is lagging,” he told Joubert.

“Tell the buggers to hurry up!” He watched Joubert ride away, then spurred to the head of
the column where his vanguard marched with fixed bayonets and charged muskets.

The regiment might have escaped from Ahmednuggur, but it was not yet clear of all
danger. British and Mahratta cavalry had ridden around the city to harass any of the
garrison who might succeed in escaping, and those horsemen now threatened both flanks of
Dodd's column, but their threat was small. Scores of other men were fleeing the city, and
those fugitives, because they were not marching in disciplined formations, made much
easier targets for the horsemen who gleefully swooped and circled about the refugees.
Dodd watched as lances and sabres slashed into the scattered fugitives, but if any of the
horsemen came too close to his own white-jacketed ranks he called a company to halt,
turned it outwards and made them level their muskets. The threat of a volley was usually
enough to drive the horsemen to search for easier pickings, and not one of the enemy came
within pistol shot of Dodd's ranks. Once, when the column was some two miles north of the
city, a determined squadron of British dragoons tried to head off the regiment's march, but
Dodd ordered two of fl|s small cannon to be unlimbered and their paltry round shots,
bouncing across the flat, dry ground, were sufficient to make the blue-coated horsemen
veer away to find another angle of attack. Dodd reinforced the threat by having his lead
company fire one volley of musketry which, even though it was at long range, succeeded in
unhoiJng one dragoon. Dodd watched the defeated horsemen ride away and felt a surge of
pride in his new regiment. This was the first time he had observed them in action, and
though the excited cavalry was hardly a worthy foe, the men's calmness and efficiency
were entirely praiseworthy. None of them hurried, none shot a ramrod out in panic, none
seemed unsettled by the sudden, savage fall of the city and none had shown any reluctance
to fire on the civilians who had threatened to obstruct their escape through the north
gate. Instead they had bitten the enemy like a cobra defending itself, and that gave
Dodd an idea. The Cobras! That was what he would call his regiment, the Cobras! He reckoned
the name would inspire his men and put fear into an enemy. Dodd's Cobras. He liked the
thought.

Dodd soon left his pursuers far behind. At least four hundred other men, most of them
Arabs, had attached themselves to his regiment and he welcomed them for the more men he
brought from the disaster, the higher his reputation would stand with Colonel Pohlmann. By
early afternoon his Cobras had reached the crest of the escarpment that looked across the
vast Deccan plain to where, far in the hazy distance, he could see the brown River
Godavery snaking through the dry land.

Beyond that river was safety. Behind him the road was empty, but he knew it would not
be long before the pursuing cavalry reappeared. The regiment had paused on the
escarpment's edge and Dodd let them rest for a while. Some of the fugitive Arabs were
horsemen and Dodd sent those men ahead to find a village that would yield food for his
regiment.

He guessed he would need to camp short of the Godavery, but tomorrow he would find a way
to cross, and a day or so later he would march with flying colours into Pohlmann's camp.
Ahmednuggur might have fallen like a rotted tree, but Dodd had brought his regiment out
for the loss of only a dozen men. He regretted those twelve men, though not the loss of
Silliere, but he particularly regretted that Simone Joubert had failed to escape from
the city. Dodd had sensed her dislike of him, and he had taken a piquant delight in the
thought of cuckolding her despised husband in spite of that dislike, but it seemed that
pleasure must be forgotten or at least postponed. Not that it mattered. He had saved his
regiment and saved his guns and the future promised plenty of profitable employment for
both.

So William Dodd marched north a happy man.

Simone led Sharpe to three small rooms on an upper floor of a house that smelt as though
it belonged to a tanner. One room had a table and four mismatched chairs, two of which had
been casually broken by looters, the second had been given over to a huge hip bath,
while the third held nothing but a straw mattress that had been slit open and its stuffing
scattered over the floorboards.

“I thought men joined Scindia to become rich,” Sharpe said in wonderment at the cramped,
ill-furnished rooms.

Simone sat on one of the undamaged chairs and looked close to tears.

Tierre is not a mercenary,“ she said, 'but an adviser. His salary is paid by France, not
by Scindia, and what money he makes, he saves.”

“He certainly doesn't spend it, does he?” Sharpe asked, looking about the small grubby
rooms.

“Where are the servants?”

“Downstairs. They work for the house owner.”

Sharpe had spotted a broom in the stable where they had put Simone's horse, so now he
went and fetched it. He drew a pail of water from the well and climbed the steps that ran up
the side of the house to discover that Simone had not moved, except to hide her face in her
hands, and so he set about cleaning up the mess himself. Whichever men had searched the
rooms for loot had decided to use the bath as a lavatory, so he began by dragging it to
the window, throwing open the shutters and pouring the contents into the alley. Then he
sloshed the bath with water and scrubbed it with a dirty towel.

“The landlord is very proud of the bath' Simone had come to the door and was watching him
'and makes us pay extra.”

“I've never had a proper bath.” Sharpe gave the zinc tub a slap. He assumed it must have
been brought to India by a European, for the outside was painted with square-rigged
ships.

“How do you fill it?”

“The servants do it. It takes a long time, and even then it's usually cold.”

“I'll have them fill it for you, if you want.”

Simone shrugged.

“We need food first.”

“Who cooks? Don't tell me, the servants downstairs?”

“But we have to buy the food.” She touched the purse at her waist.

“Don't worry about money, love,” Sharpe said.

“Can you sew?”

“My needles were on the packhorse.”

“I've got a sewing kit,” Sharpe said, and he took the broom through to the bedroom and
swept up the straw and stuffed it into the slit mattress.

Then he took the sewing kit from his pack, gave it to Simone, and told her to sew the
mattress together.

“I'll find some food while you do that,” he said, and went out with his pack. The city was
silent now, its survivors cowering from their conquerors, but he managed to barter a
handful of cartridges for some bread, some lentil paste and some mangoes. He was stopped
twice by patrolling redcoats and sepoys, but his sergeant's stripes and Colonel
McCandless's name convinced the officers he was not up to mischief. He found the body of
the Arab who had been shot just outside the courtyard where he had sheltered Simone and
dragged the riding boots off the corpse. They were fine boots of red leather with hawk-claw
steel spurs, and Sharpe hoped they would fit. Nearby, in an alley, he discovered a pile of
silk saris evidently dropped by a looter and he gathered up the whole bundle before
hurrying back to Simone's rooms.

He pushed open the door.

“Even got you some sheets,” he called, then dropped the bundle of silks because Simone
had screamed from the bedroom. Sharpe ran to the door to see her facing three Indians who
now turned to confront him. One was an older man dressed in a dark tunic richly
embroidered with flowers, while the younger two were in simple white robes.

“You got trouble?” Sharpe asked Simone.

The older man snarled at Sharpe, letting loose a stream of words in Marathi.

“Shut your face,” Sharpe said, “I was talking to the lady.”

“It is the house owner,” Simone said, gesturing to the man in the embroidered
tunic.

“He wants you out?” Sharpe guessed, and Simone nodded.

“Reckons he can get a better rent from a British officer, is that it?” Sharpe asked. He
put his food on the floor, then walked to the landlord.

“You want more rent? Is that it?”

The landlord stepped back from Sharpe and said something to his two servants who closed
in on either side of the redcoat. Sharpe slammed his right elbow into the belly of one and
stamped his left foot onto the instep of the other, then grabbed both men's heads and
brought them together with a crack. He let go of them and they staggered away in a daze as
Sharpe pulled the bayonet from its sheath and smiled at the landlord.

“She wants a bath, you understand? Bath.”

He pointed at the room where the bath stood.

“And she wants it hot, you greedy bastard, hot and steaming. And she needs food.” He
pointed at the miserable pile of food.

"You cook it, we eat it, and if you want to make any other changes, you bastard, you talk
to me first.

Understand?"

One of the servants had recovered enough to intervene and was unwise enough to try to
tug Sharpe away from his master. The servant was a big and young man, but he had none of
Sharpe's ferocity. Sharpe hit him hard, hit him again, kneed him in the crotch, and by then
the servant was halfway across the living-room floor and Sharpe pursued him, hauled him
upright, hit him again and that last blow took the servant onto the small balcony at the
top of the outside stairs.

“Go and break a leg, you sod,” Sharpe said, and tipped the man over the balustrade. He heard
the man cry out as he fell into the alley, but Sharpe had already turned back towards the
bedroom.

“Have we still got a problem?” he demanded of the landlord.

The man did not understand a word of English, but he understood Sharpe by now. There
was no problem. He backed out of the rooms, followed by his remaining servant, and Sharpe
went with them to the stairs.

“Food,” he said, pushing the bread, lentils and fruit into the hands of the cowed
landlord.

“And Madame's horse needs cleaning and watering. And feeding. Horse, there, see?” He
pointed into the courtyard.

“Feed the bugger,” he ordered. The servant he had pushed over the balcony had propped
himself against the alley's far wall where he was gingerly touching his bleeding nose.
Sharpe spat on him for good measure, then went back inside.

“I never did like landlords,” he said mildly.

Simone was half laughing and half afraid that the landlord would exact a terrible
vengeance.

“Pierre was afraid of him,” she explained, 'and he knows we are poor."

“You're not poor, love, you're with me,” Sharpe said.

“Rich Richard?” Simone said, pleased to have made a joke in a foreign language.

"Richer then you know, love. How much thread is left?

“Thread? Ah, for the needle. You have plenty, why?”

“Because, my love, you can do me a favour,” he said, and he stripped off his pack, his belt
and his jacket.